


To Find Our Own

by Legendaerie



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Blue Team, Canon Divergent - season 8, Gen, Hospitalization, Past Character Death, Red vs Blue Bingo, Rescue Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 20:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10601724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: (Blue team entry for the 2017 Bingo Wars: rescue fic)In which Tucker actually does turn this trip around and go back, and Washington finds something he left behind.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my beta PlayerProphet, whose love of Caboose has driven me to this; and to LittleFists as well, whose emotional torment over Washington also drove me to this. Oops.
> 
> (Title is from translated lyrics of the MP100 opening theme, which i happened upon while looking for inspirational music)

 

It’s a long ride back to the old Freelancer facility in a Warthog, and Tucker spends most of it deep in his thoughts. _Impossible,_ Church would have said, _Tucker doesn’t have thoughts._ He does too, he just tries not to have them because often they feel like this; that he’s done the wrong thing.

Hands steady on the wheel, he chances a look upwards into the cloud-spattered, dusky sky. Somewhere out there, a Pelican is taking Agent Washington to an orbiting dropship to await his transfer back to prison. Tucker should be happy. Or if not happy, at least relieved to know that such a dangerous, desperate man is back in custody.

Beside him, arms wrapped around one leg as he perches on the seat, Caboose is looking in the same direction. “They’re going to fix Church, right?”

“Probably, yeah.” One way or another. Not his problem anymore; Tucker turns his eyes back to the road, squares his grip on the steering wheel. They’ve fallen behind the Reds, who are half a mile ahead by now, blasting music and swerving occasionally as a fight breaks out.

“And Agent Washington? Him, too?”

The rise and fall of his chest as he bled, silently, into the snow; the defeated tilt of his helmet when the UNSC troops landed. Through two layers of amber visor, his gaze had gone through Tucker like a sniper bullet.

“They’ll do something to him, that’s for sure,” Tucker concludes grimly. Caboose settles down, chin on his knee and still watching the sky.

It’s not his fault. It’s not his fucking job to keep cleaning up after Church’s goddamn messes. Not his job to help someone who had, at turns, tried to save them and screw them over. Tucker presses down on the gas pedal, sand spraying up in his wake as he races to catch up with the Reds before they fade from sight.

“So,” asks Caboose in a much more cheerful tone of voice, “when are we going back to get them?”

 

* * *

 

They don’t bother trying to fix up his shoulder until he gets to the _Veiled Bastion_ , so when they’ve finished handcuffing him to the gurney and peeling away the shredded undersuit the wound is crusting yellow at the edges, puffy red and infected. The ship is a quarter the size of Invention, and the medbay is primitive when compared to the one there. The antiseptic bites when she smears it on, and Washington grinds his teeth as the nurse technician cleans the injury and stitches it up. Every few minutes she gives him a nervous glance, like he’s going to surge off the table and kill her.

He thinks about it, once or twice. But the exits are all blocked and guarded, so he lays back against the cold table and lets her and the other nurses work. Washington lets himself be bandaged, and bathed, and draped in blankets while they prepare his clothes. The feeling of losing yet again, when freedom was at his fingertips, weighs him down.

He’s fine until another technician comes forward with a tray of syringes; the first goes directly into his neck and floods his veins with cold. Moments later, the numbness of the sedative hits him, and though he can feel himself falling backwards Washington never feels the impact.

Instead, it feels as though he falls through the floor, crashing through the white tiled floor and straight into a nightmare.

Washington tries to raise his hands but they don't belong to him anymore. Vaguely, he can feel the nurses strapping him down and wheeling him somewhere, but everything is stretching and smearing at the edges like wet paint. Nothing looks right or sounds right, but Washington fights to keep up with the gurney, dragged along underfoot and just barely clinging to his body by his fingertips.

They make a turn and he sees, as clear as day, a woman dressed in classic Old Earth military garb. Her blonde hair is pulled back in a low ponytail under her hat, and she reaches out to him.

_Allison._

Washington jerks his eyes away from her, ignores the way they sting and how her fingertips almost brushing his shoulder tears whatever joy his life has had right out of him. He’s spent too long chasing her. He knows what paths she would take him down, and they end with him waking up with blood running out of his nose.

He looks up and she’s one of the nurses now, holding the hand of his limp body, and he squeezes his eyes closed.

In the darkness, his body slips out of his grasp.

 

* * *

 

Their side of the warehouse is empty with just the two of them. Caboose spends the first several hours still and quiet; conspicuously so, enough that Tucker starts initiating conversations just to make sure he’s alive in there and hasn't don't anything stupid, like choke to death on the crumbling-to-dust long-expired cookies they’d found in some forgotten box.

And then the questions start. “When will Agent Washington come back? Do you think they’ve fixed Church? Do you think he's found Texas? Is Agent Washington helping him look?” in an endless loop, hour after hour, until Tucker starts inventing ‘scouting missions’ for him just to send him off to some other corner of the old facility for some peace.

Not that the Reds are doing much better at adjusting. They're alternating between trying to fix the massive guns on one of the Warthogs and fleshing out ‘Red Base’ with bits and pieces they’ve gleaned off abandoned projects and damaged equipment.

He doesn't realize he has a problem too until he’s watching Simmons and Grif bickering over reconstructing some part of their base through the scope of his rifle. Even after everything that’s happened, those two can't seem to let themselves get along.

Several minutes in, Tucker finally notices how often his sniper scope rolls upward to a distant skylight, to where the velvet blue is spread with thousands of emerging stars. It's been a little over 30 hours since the storage unit and the Freelancer were taken into custody; and the fact that he's been keeping track is damning evidence.

“Son of a bitch,” Tucker groans, and takes advantage of his prone sniper’s position to shove the gun away and plant his visor in the dirt.

He doesn't owe Washington shit - if anything the bastard owes them, for taking Church from them not once but twice - and Epsilon isn’t the same person Tucker had known for years, and yet here he is.

He kicks the ground, indulging himself in a good old fashioned juvenile temper tantrum before pushing himself onto his feet.

“Hey, Caboose?” he calls over the long distance radio. “Have you seen a plane around here?”

“Um.” A pause, and Tucker starts the descent from the rafters in the warehouse roof. “Which answer will make you happy?”

“It’ll take a hell of a lot more than you can give me to make that happen,” he gripes, favoring one shoulder as it protests the pull of supporting his weight. Right, the Meta had grabbed that arm and wrenched it; probably not broken, but it tore some muscles for sure.

“No?” Caboose asks.

Tucker huffs. “Okay, well, we need to find one. We left a couple things behind, and we gotta get them back.”

The delighted shout that blasts through his radio startles Tucker into letting go; thankfully, Caboose catches him and proceeds to lift him above his head.

“Field trip! Field trip! Field trip!”

“Fuck-- down, Caboose,” Tucker snaps, and as soon as his feet are back on solid ground, he’s off, marches towards the side of the facility that holds the Red Base.

He doesn't bother hiding his approach either by using any of the boxes or crates they’d set up as ‘cover’ and only slows down when Sarge barks a “halt, Blue!”

“You got a Pelican over on your side?”

The old soldier continues to glare down his shotgun at Tucker, despite the fact that they were fighting back to back barely a day ago. “What's it to you?”

“We're going on a field trip!” hoots Caboose. From behind a crate, Simmons pokes his head up.

“You're not going after Agent Washington and Epsilon, are you?”

Sarge rounds on him. “And why wouldn't they be? Not even a wretched Blue would leave one of their own in enemy clutches!”

Tucker thinks back on some of the shit they got up to in Blood Gulch. “Well, I mean--”

“Plus, they need a man to even the odds! The best kind of battle is one where the two sides are evenly matched. And even though that's not possible, because the Reds will always be vastly superior, we should admire their persistence to catch up to us.”

“Right. Anyway,” and Tucker turns to Simmons. “Do you have a ship or not?”

“We’ve got one,” pipes in Grif, emerging from beside Simmons, “but you can't have it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

Tucker doesn't see Sarge moving until the man has already got an arm around his neck. But instead of the headlock he expected, Sarge claps him on the shoulder.

“Because we’re coming with you! Ain't no way I'm gonna trust you with quality Red team equipment.”

He's not sure whether to be touched or annoyed. Caboose solves that moral dilemma immediately.

“Is it time for hugs?”

“No,” Tucker yelps, and shakes himself out of Sarge’s grip.

 

* * *

 

The ground underneath him keeps shifting, switching between a cracked concrete floor pockmarked by bullet holes and a neatly trimmed suburban lawn.  He can hear snatches of her voice - the same words, looped over and over, until they’re garbled nonsense - but that, too, eventually fades. Washington gets to his feet slowly, hands and knees first, and raises his head.

The dream comes into focus now, settling on a sunset cityscape. There are people around him, mere suggestions of faces and bodies, and the next step he takes brings him into the street.

A hand claps on his shoulder, pulls him backwards. It’s Maine, without his helmet. His eyes are clear and warm, dark brown with none of the miserable bloodshot streaks from later years.

“Careful. You’ll get hit,” he warns, and a car whips by. The smack of the wind it its wake feels heartbreakingly real, painful against his bare face, and Washington’s should feels cold when Maine removes his hand.

Even though they're both in civilian clothes, the rest of him looks just as Washington remembers. The tattoo is there, the overlapping Greek letters down the back of his neck, and Washington dares to brush a finger along the outline of the symbol for Sigma.

“We’ll be late,” Maine rumbles, and starts to head off through the crowd. As he watches, the tattoos shrink and fade, slithering down his back as though washed away by some invisible rain.

It’s reassuring to be with Maine again, though Washington can’t entirely place why. The city around them is pulsing red-gold like a flashlight shone through skin, the air warm and insulating as they walk. Progress is slow but he doesn’t feel like they’re in a hurry, for once. It’s just the pair of them in a sea of strangers, swimming - as always - upstream.

“You said you were waiting for me?” Washington asks. Maine nods, hums an agreement. His voice is full and rich, like it used to be. With every step he seems to grow lighter, the slump of his shoulders lifting. In contrast, Washington feels heavy - joyful but heavy, as though he’s seeing something he shouldn’t. His legs start to burn with the effort of keeping up. “Hey-- not so fast.”

“Hurry.”

Maine breaks into a jog and Washington struggles, desperately to keep up. He feels like he’s knee deep in wet sand, and the hand he reaches out goes unnoticed.

 

* * *

 

Even if his life depended on it, Tucker would never admit that Grif was a better driver than him. As it currently does, the best he can do is bite his tongue and hold on to one of the suspended handles in the cockpit as the ship finishes breaking through the atmosphere. Somehow they’d managed to find the auto-stabilizers, but not until Grif had nearly tried to drill his way through a particularly dense cloud

Behind him, on his hands and knees, Simmons dry-heaves into a bucket.

“We’re in space!” Caboose declares, hands presses against the transparent steel front of the cockpit, where the curve of the white-green planet below bisects the star-studded void beyond. Unblurred by atmospheric distortion, the _Valley Bastion_ looks like a game piece floating in the ether, growing as they approached it.

Tucker dares to voice an optimistic thought. “Well, this is going pretty--”

 _“Identity yourself,”_ booms a voice through their intercom, and he winces. Of course it’s not going to be that easy.

An uneasy silence blankets the cockpit as glances are thrown from person to person - urgent, silent conversations through helmets that all translated to ‘well I’m not answering the bastard’ - until Simmons crawls to the control panel and speaks into the microphone.

“Ship designation Tango Yankee Zero Zero Nine, this is Lieutenant Ford. Some of the sim troopers from Outpost Blood Gulch have volunteered information regarding the Epsilon unit and ways to get it back under control.”

His face, where it isn’t impassive steel, is perfectly calm - his voice steady. Grif slowly turns to stare at him as the silence stretches on.

_“... Very well. You will be met at the hangar with an escort.”_

Like a puppet with his strings abruptly cut, Simmons collapses onto the floor again, moment of heroism apparently over. Grif takes his hands off the controls long enough to pat him on the shoulder.

“That’ll do, pig,” he says, and gets an elbow to the knee for his trouble.

A few minutes later and their little Pelican is easing into the belly of the Valley Bastion. There’s a smattering of crewmen on the ground, all in pale white or grey armor with the peculiar, almost wedge-shaped helmets of the rank and file.

None of which do any of the Reds and Blues have.

“Shit,” says Tucker as he peers out the window to the hangar floor slowly coming to meet them. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Behind the Pelican, the hangar doors close like teeth, swallowing them whole. No way out, now.

“Okay, what now?” asks Grif as he eases the ship down with a wobble - the whole craft jolting as one set of wheels touched down before the rest. Tucker grips the loop above his head as tight as he can, feeling the weight of his sword on his hip and his gun slung across his back.

“We’ll improvise, just-- give it a second,” he hisses. On his other side, Sarge scoffs. “No one say anything until my signal. That includes you, Caboose.”

To his relief, his teammate nods. Tucker punches the release for the back hatch, and the Pelican opens slowly to reveal a lone soldier staring up at them. His armor is pale, and the narrow visor of his Rogue helmet gives him a sharp, intense look.

For a beat, no one moves.

Aware of the eyes on him, the weight of their lives and expectations on his shoulders, Tucker lifts his chin and steps down the ramp, approaching their escort. “Nice place you got here,” he says, too loudly. Heads turn their way.

Their escort snaps a hand around his elbow and a gun under his chin, voice low and rumbling. “Leave your guns on the ship. I will escort you to the holding area.”

“That does sound very nice,” says Caboose, dropping his gun with a clatter. Tucker shoots him an exasperated look as his teammate trots down the ramp. “Are you holding Agent Washington too? He needs it. I tried to give him a hug before but he said no.”

“I thought you said you were here to crack the Epsilon unit?” the moon grey soldier replies, his expression still a mask of dislike. Tucker hands his gun off to Sarge, leaving the inactive hilt of the key sword anchored to his thigh and hoping their escort doesn’t ask about it.

“We are a highly trained team of experts!” declares Sarge, as Grif halfheartedly tries to pull Simmons onto his feet. “Throw us at your problems, and we’ll take care of them for you. There’s no situation that you can’t make better by sending in a few soldiers from the Red Team. Except for Grif. I wouldn’t send him anywhere but back to basic.”

That inscrutable visor turns to pin Tucker in place, then back to the rest of the soldiers. “You two--” he points to Grif and Simmons. “Stay with the Pelican.”

“Simmons,” Sarge intones, following Caboose down the ramp and looking sullen without his shotgun, “you’re in charge.”

Still on the floor, Simmons pulls his helmet back on and offers a weak thumbs up.

Thus settled, their escort tightens his grip on Tucker’s arm and starts to drag him away. “Watch it,” Tucker complains. “I like to be on the other side of the manhandling, thank you.”

“Shut up, or I’ll shoot you. Starting with the stupid one.”

The five, brightly colored soldiers all stare at each other after that remark.

“Uh,” Grif says as the hatch slowly closes on them, “which one of us is the stupid one?”

 

* * *

 

The crowds are thinning out as the road slants uphill, forming a bridge that’s sharp against an empty skyline and, as he gets closer, a flickering orange-gold sea. There are a couple of figures standing against the low, concrete edge of the bridge, and the shorter of the two raises her head.

“Connie,” Washington breathes; and he tries to speed up to catch her, he really does, but the weight is too much and he falls to the ground. This time, Maine is there to help him up, and he can hardly feel the concrete under his feet as he comes up to her.

She’s paler than he remembers and looks cold, so he wraps her in a hug, ignoring the pins and needles feeling slowly creeping up his thighs. “I missed you,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for--- a long time.”

“She has,” echoes the other person. Washington looks over Connie’s shoulder to see York, his jacket hunched up against the chill. “Rude, to keep her waiting so long. You just missed the twins.”

“Missed them?”

Maine gestures to the sea below. “We fall,” he says. and Connie eases out of his hug.

“We’re not supposed to jump alone. It’s safer if you do it in pairs, but. I wanted to see you again after--” She makes a face. “After how things ended.”

“Right,” he says, a flicker of memory resurfacing. An armor retrieval failure. Blood on Texas’s knives. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t talk,” she says. On the edge of the bridge, sparks spitting intermittently from his lighter, York watches them with clear, sharp eyes.

“You should get going, Connie. Not good to stay here too long.”

“Hypocrite,” she shoots back.

The lighter gives out a gentle flame, and York cups his hands around it as if in prayer. “I know, I know. I’ll wait for her just-- just a little bit longer, okay?”

Maine claps his hand on Connie’s shoulder, the other on Washington’s. A connection seems to surge between them, warm and real, piercing him in the heart even as the numbness hits the pit of his stomach. On the horizon, the sun sinks even further down, bleeding the vibrant colors from the edges of the sky.

He’s running out of time.

 

* * *

 

Clearly, the _Valley Bastion_ wasn’t made for transporting dangerous war criminals. For one, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of guards around other than their escort. The ones that Tucker does see all seem focused on some other crisis, and barely give him and his companions a second glance.

The holding area is some kind of haphazard decontamination area; Only a few rooms, with solid-looking walls and viewports of transparent glass. Unhindered by guns or painfully tight grips, Caboose flings himself at each of the viewports in turn like a kid at a pet store. On the second one, he stops.

“Agent Washington! Hello? Are you broken?”

“Better not be,” the guard says grimly. “They're trying to find traces of the Epsilon program in his--” His head snaps up. He lowers his gun to turn away, fingertips pressed to the side of his helmet as Tucker strains to see past Caboose and into the room. “Shit. Change in plans,” he says, and shoves Tucker into the first of the contamination rooms, slamming him in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.

“Fuck!” Tucker yelps, stumbling only to have Sarge shoved into him and pinned to the floor by the weight of the man. There’s a rumbling sound in the hallway - a sound of distress from Caboose, and Tucker tries to reach his key sword. With visibly more difficulty than the others, the guard shoves Caboose inside, locks the door and hisses instructions.

“Stay put, and don’t touch anything. I’ll be right back.” Then he’s gone, storming down the halls.

“Well,” Sarge says from on top of Tucker, “that sounds perfectly reasonable. Cut us out of here, Blue!”

The guard had hit him pretty damn hard. “What?” grouses Tucker.

“Think about it. Our friend here left Grif and Simmons back on the ship with several guns and put us in the room directly next to Agent Washington, then left.”

“But he said--”

“--through a voice emulator,” Sarge informs him, and Tucker would blow a man for some painkillers and earplugs. “So, really, it could be a man or--”

Tucker rolls out from under Sarge, hauls himself to his feet, and cuts a shamefully crooked line through the door. It does the trick, and he shakes his head another time for good measure. Even with the helmet, that guard was pretty damn strong.

Sirens erupt, the lighting strips overhead switching from peaceful white to hazard yellow. “Watch the door,” he says to no one in particular, and plunges his sword into the lock on Washington’s cell.

 

* * *

 

“So. Do we jump together, or--” Washington asks, easing his way to the edge of the bridge to stare down into the water. It’s dark under the bridge like motor oil, shiny only on the surface and inky-black underneath. It makes him uneasy to see, and he pulls back.

York snorts, the lighter guttering out from the force of his breath. “Oh, you’re not going with them, You’re just here to see them off.”

One last goodbye. With a sinking feeling, he turns to study the faces of his friends and finds their features, too, to be indistinct like photos just a little out of focus. Like a poorly recorded film, rather than the real thing.

And he knows that from here on out they’ll only fade further, until they’re just a handful of fragmented moments in his mind; the sound of a laugh in the mess hall, a firm shoulder against his in the battlefield. They’ll erode, eventually, and for the first time Washington can understand an echo of Epsilon’s agony.

“Good to see you again,” Connie says, then takes a step backwards, then another. The low concrete wall hits her in the back of the thighs, just above her knees, and she topples backwards. Too late to catch her, Washington tries to take a step forward but all he can do is watch her fall.

He turns back towards Maine, grabbing the man’s face between his hands. There’s no scars on his throat, his face; no signs of the half-mad monster he had become at the end. And yet--

“I’m sorry,” Washington says. “For you, too. God, I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Maine flicks him in the dead center of his forehead, the contact setting off another torrent of the sandy, cold, numbness; enough that his vision swims at the edges and he swears that when Maine falls, he falls surrounded by other, translucent figures.

And then there is only him and York on the bridge, as the last sliver of sun starts to drown in the dark ocean. In his hands, the lighter looks like a star, illuminating his face as he turns to Washington.

“Take care--” is all he manages to say to Washington before the dream fades, and he’s left alone in the freezing dark.

 

* * *

 

It feels wrong to look at the face of the man stretched out naked on the stretcher, a dozen wires and threads hooked up to his body like spiderwebs in a crypt, so Tucker focuses instead on the screens. Some are relaying vital signs - elevated heartbeat earlier, slowing down now, body temperature lowering as well - while others read walls of technical commands that he can’t follow.

“Hurry!” barks Sarge from just outside; on the corner of his vision, Tucker watches him duck inside just long enough to unhook the IV bag from the pole at Washington’s bedside and withdraw with it held in his hands like a quarterstaff.

Caboose is holding Washington’s face in both of his hands, pulling the limp man upright and revealing the storm of wires pulled into the back of his head. “Agent Washington? Can you hear me?”

Tucker fumbles through the cabinets until he finds gauze and tape - he’s spend a few weekends in emergency rooms back on Earth, he remembers the basics - and eases the IV out of Washington’s arm. “Careful with him, Caboose,” he reminds his teammate.

“Because he’s broken?”

Tucker eyes the sloppy patch job they’d done on his shoulder, yellow-tinted blood seeping through the bandages. “Yeah.”

There’s sound of fighting outside. In a fit of panic, Tucker swears under his breath, grabs a fistful of wires from Washington’s neck and yanks. Sparks fly, and several screens flash furious error messages. Washington’s vitals spike briefly, and Tucker finds himself holding his breath as he watches. After a tense moment, they seem to even out.

Tucker makes short work of the rest of the things adhered to Washington’s body, including the restraints at his wrists. Caboose, wrapping Washington in the hospital gown, cradles the ex-Freelancer in his arms.

“Do not worry. We will put you back together, Agent Washington,” he says, and ruins the moment by headbutting Washington in the face with his helmet.

Eyes drawn by the movement, Tucker doesn’t mean to look at Washington bare and limp and small in Caboose’s arms, but he does. Sirens still blaring in the back of his mind, he compares this injured, two-faced stranger to his best friend; the one whose copy they’ll have to leave behind.

“God,” he says, turning away as fast as possible, “we need to find this bastard his clothes.”

There’s an undersuit laying in a bin on the other side of the room, torn but cleaned, and a set of powder-blue armor. Tucker bundles it up in blankets as best he can, nearly falls over backwards with the burden, but soldiers on with one hand still gripping his sword.

WIth a shudder, Tucker leads Caboose back into the hallway. Sarge has his feet planted and is sporting a few scrape on his armor, a trio of unconscious guards scattered around him, and spares them a nod.

“Get behind me, Blues. I’ll lead us back to the ship.”

Tucker nods back, too weighed down by Washington’s armor to reply.

He’s not totally sure which way leads to the hanger, but he follows Sarge, key sword held out in front of him like a shield. Once or twice they run into people on either end - Tucker manages to take out three at once by dropping his sword and swinging the bag of armor with both hands - but they find themselves back at the hangar in one piece.

It feels like a properly dramatic moment for one last obstacle to appear in their path, especially as Tucker watches the Pelican’s engines start in reply to Sarge’s urgent orders. Tucker jogs backwards, half-expecting some indomitable figure in black armor to appear to cut them down. The ship raises, the back hatch lowers, and the hangar remains firmly sealed shut.

“I’ll get the door. Get Washington inside,” he says, slinging the armor to Sarge and sprinting past the Pelican. As if responding to his urgency, the sword seems to surge in his grip. The sound of gunfire erupts behind him, as does the sound of Sarge’s voice in his radio.

“All right, men, let’s show these bastards what a well trained Red can do!”

On cue, Grif chimes in with “where are we going to find one of those?” as Tucker rolls into cover behind a crate.

Almost out.

“What about Church?” Caboose whines, and the back of Tucker’s head clunks painfully against the back of the crate as he grits his teeth.

“We’ll get him on the next trip.” Tucker forces himself to his feet, darts the next few yards and veers back into cover. “I promise.”

The blade of the key sword seems to triple in size when he reaches the end of the hangar and swings it, burying it in the steel of the doors. Even with the way it cuts through it like butter, the motion involved with cutting a ship-sized hole makes his injuries from the fight with the Meta burn. He swears he feels something in his skin split as he swings the sword up in a curve, aiming for a circle, but he keeps going. They’re so close, if he can just--

“Ah, shit,” says Sarge, and an explosion breaks Tucker’s concentration. He whirls around, sword still in hand, and looks to the hallway.

A cluster of heavy artillery specialists, real soldiers, probably more real than himself or any of his friends. And behind them, in stark moon-white armor with a gun in one hand and a helmet in the other, is the guard from before.

Yeah, that’s worth an ‘aw, shit.’

Tucker gives the hangar doors one last violent hack then bolts, feeling the pull of depressurization sucking at his heels. In perfect time with a volley, the pale Rogue leans forward and takes off as well, effortlessly dodging the missiles his side launches. Tucker has the advantage of less ground to cover as well, and makes a blind leap for the closing door.

Caboose catches him and tosses him inside the Pelican as the hatch crosses the halfway point. But the escort doesn’t stop, even as the ship takes off, and instead jumps for it.

His boots land on the edge of the hatch, hand gripping the roof of the Pelican, and for a moment the sheer strength in his body keeps the door stalled open. Simmons, Sarge and Caboose all gape at the man in the pale armor, and Tucker places himself between him and Washington.

“Epsilon is gone,” he says, distorted voice revealing no emotion. The razor sharp glare of the narrow visor feels like a tangible force as the man perches on the hatch door, staring down at them. “Taken to a base on the surface. I’ll find you.”

He tosses something inside. Simmons, somehow, manages to catch it, and the guard does a graceful backflip out of the way, leaving dents in the Pelican.

It’s a helmet - not black and shattered like Texas, or grey and smeared with blood like Washington’s. This one is powder blue; matching the pieces scattered on the floor from where the bundle Tucker had tied had come undone.

“Church?” Caboose asks, peering over Simmons’ shoulder, then deflates. He recoils from the armor and instead slips forward to join Grif in the cockpit.

Tucker throws a look at the man lying crumpled in the corner and can’t help but feel a little disappointed, too.

 

* * *

 

Washington opens his eyes to familiar surroundings; the roof of a pelican, armored shapes above him. For a moment, he expects to hear their voices, too - North, Wyoming, Carolina - for a moment he blinks and sees Allison, then a orange-red sunset over the ocean.

But the voices around him aren’t from Project Freelancer. Well, not exactly.

“They’re called stabilizers, Grif, not auto pilot. There’s a difference--”

“I can’t see shit in all these goddamn clouds, will you stop trying to offer directions--”

“I”m just saying--”

“You do a lot of just saying--”

Washington sits up, suddenly aware of the freezing metal against his bare skin, and sucks in a sharp breath. Fear and a need to know where he is, drives him upright faster than he should be, and the world spins around him.

A man in teal armor breaks out of his lean on the opposite wall and rolls his shoulders in a sigh.

“Oh, thank god you’re awake. Now put these on.”

Something limp, dark, and coarsely textured is flung his way. Washington takes a moment to put the pieces back together, remember who he is. Who is speaking to him.

“Tucker?”

“No, that’s a change of clothing. This black body is a lot thicker. Bow chika bow wow”

Washington gives the sim-trooper a dirty look. Definitely Tucker.

He pulls himself upright and, after a quick check that no one is pointing a gun at him, turns his back on Tucker to get dressed. The hospital gown falls to his feet, but he struggles to get the first leg into the undersuit.

“So,” he says, staunchly ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the sinking feeling that he’d been having a very important dream, “where am I this time?”

“Uh, you’re in a ship and you’re on your way to safety. You’re welcome,” Tucker says, and tosses a gauntlet his way. Washington catches it, but barely, a mix of drugged and floored.

“You-- you what?”

“We broke in and sprung you out, man.”

“Why?”

Tucker recoils. Washington hadn’t meant for it to come out so harsh, but now that it did he doesn’t find himself too keen on taking it back. Why shouldn’t he be suspicious of their angle, after all this time? What could they want with him?

“Because you’re our friend, Agent Washington!” Caboose says, and plonks a powder-blue chestpiece onto Washington’s fractured shoulders. “And we came back for you!”

Washington freezes, and feels even more naked than before. Even when Tucker approaches with the back piece of the armor and helps Caboose buckle it into the front - even with that familiar weight, he feels as though he’s been pierced right through the resilient alloy plates and Kevlar weave.

“Friends?” he repeats, softly.

“Yes! And friends gets hugs!”

If his shoulder was bad before, it gets worse when he’s suddenly crushed between Caboose and Tucker; the latter of whom is, at least, not a willing participant either.

“Blue team! Blue team! Blue team!” Caboose chants, wobbling them around in some approximation of a circle, as Tucker fights to pry himself loose.

“Get-- get off me,” Washington manages at last; stooping down to grab the helmet that had somehow rolled to his feet. It doesn’t fit quite right, the interior bands needing some adjustments, but he feels significantly better with the visor between him and the rest of the Pelican’s inhabitants.

Poking his head around the door to the cockpit, where he’d been breaking up an argument, Sarge seems to shoot them all dirty looks.

“You Blues better stop horsing around back there, or I’ll toss the three of your into the clouds! Is that clear?”

“Get bent,” hollers Tucker, with no real venom behind it; once again, Washington’s world swims at the edges with images of a woman in brown armor, a woman in soft camo-print fatigues.

_Take care._

They’re going to come after him. This freedom is only a temporary thing; at least this time, maybe, he’ll see it coming in time to do something.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
